Contrast and Change
by Snoring Tiger
Summary: Arthur is the last magician left. Everyone else has been wiped out. Magic is being destroyed and technology is taking over. He has to battle to save the last of his kind. Anti the Infinite Holic AU.


Arthur sighed and smiled, content with the results of the stars he had artificially created. They managed to radiantly shine even without a constant flow of his magic running through them. That truly was a success, much better than some of his other projects involving skeletons and working with time. What's better, this would be coming in handy very soon.

Looking around at his work space one last time, he shut his eyes. Oh how he was going to miss the perfect atmosphere of his room. The beautiful lighting his amber tinted windows created. The intricate black tapestry throughout the room. The multiple clocks ticking in succession. How he was going to miss all of this.

He would be okay though. He would simply be joining the rest of his kind. Arthur was the last of the type able to make use of the taboo art of magic and had been for a few months. Ever since the new government had been flooding into Arthur's town, his type was being wiped out for being associated with illegal practices and a threat to society and all humanity. Now he was the only one left, and this, his room for expressing and honing his skills, were all that he had left.

Arthur's hands began to shake. He could sense it in his gut. Soon they would be coming, coming to kill him. He had prepared for this. Shut off all his emotions. Removed any scrap of remorse or empathy from his body. Lost all rationality. Now all that mattered to him was protecting himself and removing the enemy.

A shattering of glass. A loud crashing noise. The sound of footsteps invading his home.

Arthur slowly turned around to look at the cocky looking government official who was looking him in the eye with determined, swirling azure eyes.

"My name is Alfred and I work for the government. You already know why I'm here. If you come peacefully, I won't hurt you," The man stated, his gaze not wavering. Arthur sneered.

"You'll kill me either way."

"I don't work like that."

"You work for the government. You want to change this world by having technology run the world."

"Sometimes the world needs change." The officer sighed. "I don't like how this is being done, but things change. Empires will rise and rise until they become so strong nothing will support them so they collapse. This is the same. People used to rely on magic for their lives but now times have changed. This is the new generation. You're standing in the way of progress, and for that I will not forgive you."

Arthur let out a cold laugh. "Well, aren't you determined? Looks like there's only one way to solve this little fight then." Alfred grinned.

"Bring it."

Arthur narrowed his eyes. reminiscent to that of a snake's as he quickly chanted a summoning spell under his breath. Motioning to the ground with his hands and raising them upwards, thousands of tiny skulls and flashing lights were summoned and surrounding the room. Faster, faster they rotated with the movements of the magician's hands.

Alfred tried to keep up with the rapid changes of light and motion but found it very difficult, and soon enough he was beginning to feel the effects of dizziness. Reaching for his pocket, Alfred pulled out a small, blue chip. Placing this in his hand, Alfred kept his hand in a fist as light cobalt electricity sparked out from his hand.

Arthur jumped back in surprise. He had not been expecting that. He thought that the government cronies would simply shoot him and be done with it. He did not expect to actually be given a chance to fight for his life, hence why he never bothered to try and predict Alfred's movements earlier. Now he was regretting not trying to use fortune telling when he had the chance. That did not stop his fun at having an evenly matched opponent though.

Alfred aimed his hand at the magician and shot lightning at him. Arthur ducked down and summoned more skulls to float around the boy's head. Alfred growled in frustration and destroyed all of them in one go with a large bolt of lightning. Arthur crouched behind his mahogany desk for a couple of seconds to catch his breath. This boy was a lot tougher than he looked.

Getting an idea, Arthur glanced over at a shallow metal basin filled with slightly illegal contents. Rolling away from his desk as it was set on fire from Alfred, Arthur rapidly rattled off the curse to create a skeleton from the substance. This made Alfred gasp in shock and move away from Arthur.

"You can use alchemy? You can bring people back from the dead?" Arthur laughed and glared darkly at the naive fool. It was almost endearing how innocent the boy seemed. Almost.

"Don't be stupid, this is merely a-" Arthur trailed off as he gazed at the skeleton's head. Looking back at him was not simple bone, but the face of his previous lover. The one before she had been brutally murdered in the name of change. His dear Amelia Jones. Oh how he had missed her dearly.

He shuffled over to the bones and cradled them close to his body, leaning down to nuzzle the bone. To him, his sweetheart was reciprocating and looking back at him with vibrant eyes, akin to the government official's. Said government official was taken aback, and slightly disturbed, by this display of affection. On one hand he knew this was the perfect opportunity to take down the last man standing in the progress of technological change. On the other hand, he did not want to be a monster and ruin what he knew was a sentimental moment.

Alfred solved his internal debate by shooting at a pane of glass, making shards rain around Arthur. That broke him out of his stupor, and he frantically looked down at the skeleton to see the sweet smile of hers fade away in a red mist and the skeleton following suit. Neither of them spoke for a moment.

Arthur looked up at Alfred with such an intense loathing and hatred that he had to take a step back from the magician.

"Now you've done it," Arthur growled, his eyes swimming with hate, panic, fear. Alfred placed his pistol back in his pocket and instead pulled out a small black sphere in one hand and his small computer chip in the other. He pressed a button on the small chip and a turquoise hologram stats screen popped up.

Rapidly pressing a few of the options like he had been trained to do like it was second nature, Alfred felt the intensity of the power in his chip grow. He placed the sphere back in his pocket just as Arthur had finished muttering in a long dead language and had summoned a star from what appeared to be his heart.

Arthur held this star of energy close to him before releasing it and letting it morph instead into multiple clocks and small balls of light. Alfred squinted at the new light intensity in the room and again released some cyan coloured lightning from his hand and attempted to strike Arthur but to no avail. Arthur only smirked and crossed his arms so that the palms of his hands were above the opposite shoulders. More clocks were rising up.

The ticking of the clocks was accompanied by thoughts. Memories, Alfred assumed. With each passing second and tick of a clock, Alfred's head was filled with images from Arthur's mind. Little children being shot. People being tortured and mocked as they were bleeding to death on the floor. A child screaming, voice drenched in agony as he watched his parents being killed with advanced technology. For a brief second, Alfred thought he saw his long lost, disowned sister being impaled in the chest but Alfred forgot about that as he heard a whisper more agonising than those thoughts.

"You think you're helping us, with change. You're not." The whisper came from Arthur, voice filled with venom and unattached eyes.

Too fast, too heavy, a crashing wave of guilt, sorrow, anger and confusion crashed onto Alfred and he had to clutch his head and scream out loud at the sheer force of sudden emotions filling him. He didn't know what to do, who to believe. Was change the right choice? Was magic really as taboo as people made out? Why was so much slaughter going on without his knowledge? Did he deserve to live for being a part of this?

Watching the boy suffer immensely due to his work, Arthur grinned. Perfect. This revenge was beautiful. Slowly he would be so conflicted by his own thoughts and Arthur's intruding memories that he would break down fully and be left in a vegetative emotional state. That did obviously not make up for the eradication of all of his kind but it was at least a start.

Instead, Arthur heard deranged and strangled laughter from him as he saw that slowly but surely Alfred was extending his hands and creating a growing cobalt ray of lightning between his hands. Arthur peered at his eyes and saw that the pupils were shaking and the dark navy was shaking and mixing with the lighter azure of his eyes. He had snapped too.

How very interesting.

Two could play this game. Arthur simply transformed some of the orbs into one large, blinding snake of light and he whirled it around him a few times to test it's strength. Arthur deemed it strong enough for its' purpose.

Alfred locked eyes with the magician and Arthur locked eyes with the government officials. Both stared into manic and dead eyes. Raising their hands, and eyes never moving, both extended their hands forward and let their chosen forms of energy attempt to destroy the other. This was it, the moment to decide who would live and who would die.

Both began to scream their lungs out, self dignity be damned. Both were terrified. Both wanted to live, both had strong reasons to and neither wanted to succumb. That's why, even as Arthur felt himself losing consciousness and when some of Arthur's light tore deeply into Alfred's skin and to the bone, both of them pushed on. Magic against technology, old against new, change against tradition. Neither side was technically right, but neither was wrong.

Something strange began to happen though. As the crystal clear lightning pressed against the light, some of the magic in the light reacted with the contents of the lightning. Both men assumed they were seeing it at first, so they still shouted and yelled and cursed as they battled for survival, arms moving rapidly as the energy was exchanged.

They stopped though when they realised that what was created was real. Butterflies. Innocent, harmless butterflies had been created from a concoction of hate and destruction and were caught in the middle of the onslaught. Both sides vanquished as they stopped the flow of energy and lowered their arms. Each man curiously looked at the butterflies.

"H-how?" Alfred asked tiredly. he was drained from how much power had been used.

"Must've used the wrong spell and this is the repercussion after mixing with your weapon," Arthur replied quietly, extending a finger shakily and smiling as a snow white butterfly landed on it.

"They're just like the innocent population," Alfred murmured, "The people I want to protect and help."

"They're just like my people," Arthur replied, "The people I wanted to save and live on with."

Both of them caught each other's gaze and frowned.

"I don't want to kill you." Alfred stated, "I don't like you, but you've done nothing wrong."

Arthur sighed. "Nor I you, but if I don't then there's no hope for me to live." There was silence as Alfred and Arthur still looked on at the butterflies.

"There's a way. Get out of here." Alfred muttered. Arthur cocked an eyebrow.

"You'll let me go?"

"I don't like it but go. Sooner or later I'll probably have to find you again, after technology rules this land. But time has binded us." Alfred explained. "At least that's how I want to look at it."

Arthur chuckled. "That sounds like something I would say." Alfred smiled softly.

"Hurry." Arthur faced the government official and nodded before turning his back and leaving. There was no doubt in his mind that he would return to fight Alfred another day, no doubt at all.

Next time he'd be even stronger.

* * *

_**My interpretation on the MMD AU called Anti the Infinite Holic. I just love that video so much, it's like a work of art to me. Therefore I hope this meets those standards!**_

_**EDIT: My grammar is abysmal at night time so everything's fixed now!**_

_**-Snoring Tiger**_


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